"Michael Jackson's dead," said a young, tall, blonde woman whilst talking excitedly with her friends in a tunnel at Bank station. This was the only phrase I caught.

Neither child nor adult, black nor white, man nor woman, guilty nor innocent. Michael Jackson was a blank canvass of a man. He tried to please everyone. As I sat on the underground last night watching the news spread like wildfire through the tunnels and carriages, it seemed that he really got close.

On the tube, two young men, one Black-American, one White-British were speaking animatedly.
"He died broke in the end ... Absolute legend ... Heart attack." 
"Excuse me, sorry, who's died?" I asked.
"Michael Jackson." The American replied.
"No way, I heard a girl saying it earlier, but I didn't believe it. When did it happen?"
"About an hour ago." 
"Everyone already knows."
"Yeah, my mate got it on his iPhone just before we left the pub," said the British man.
"It's already in the LA times," added the American man.
"I'm really sad, even if he was possibly a criminal," I said.
"Ah, that thing with the kids, it's just people chasing money. Money talks," said the American man

A thirty-something pale blonde woman, wearing pearl earings and work-dress, turned to the man to her side, a Mediterranean looking stranger, wearing a sharp grey suit and pink shirt.
She said: "Oh the poor man, only fifty. He never had a childhood, always pushed into the limelight, even when he was a boy. Such a shame.
The grey-suited man said: "Anyone in their twenties to thirties will be defined by this man."
They continued talking about him demonstrating great knowledge of his biography and discography.

Across the carriage was a light-skinned black-British boy in his early twenties. A black man with a shaved head looked earnestly out from his t-shirt. Dates commemorating his life; nineteen-sixty-something to nineteen-ninety-something were printed below. Next to him was a Nepali-looking girl with a British accent. The boy asked who had died and I explained.
"He was supposed to be playing the O2, wasn't he?" the boy said.
"Yeah, he was," I replied.
He and his date looked stunned for the rest of the journey.

As I got off the train I looked at my phone. An friend of mine had sent me a message: "Michael Jackson's dead."

by Chris Dalby

The MP expenses scandal has succeeded in doing what years of policy announcements, Commons debates and campaign events utterly failed to: re-galvanise the British public’s interest in the political system. To hear the ways in which MPs that have been using tax money as their own piggy bank are being held to account would make the architects of democracy weep for joy. It is all the more shameful then that this outrage rests upon a foundation of utter hypocrisy.

For the past 6 weeks pro-Tamil protesters have held a continuous presence outside the Houses of Parliament, demonstrating for the UK government to do more to to help the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Photo courtesy of flickr user Travis_Pictures, taken on 11th May in Westminster

In the last 24 hours the protests have grown to around 2000 people with Westminster Bridge jammed with traffic, buses unable to move and Parliament square blocked off to all cars. The sit down protest start growing early afternoon and by 7pm, the police had built up a heavy presence and ambulances were on stand by on the bridge. However, the protest was remaining peaceful with many demonstrators sat on the ground chanting.

Gordon Brown last week managed to do what leaders from all over Europe have been longing to do for months – banish the recession from the front pages. Unfortunately for our much-maligned prime minister, it was perhaps not in the way he had wanted. Poor Gordon is no stranger to bad headlines, but the recent cocktail of public mockery, legislative failure and a Caesar-esque cabinet rebellion has left him licking his wounds like a cat after a fight with a car.

Article and photos by Alexandra Cacciatore

2nd April 2009

It’s time for me to come clean in two ways. First, I have never been to a protest. For the past week and half, the media in London has been rabidly spinning the G20 summit. The casual observer might have noticed that the local press seemed to be giving more coverage to the protests and supposed violence surrounding the summit than to the actual events and issues. It’s only the leaders of the top twenty economies getting together to talk about why the world is falling to pieces, yet the media swirled itself around a few sound bites about “bankers being strung up”. Pssst, I think it was meant metaphorically.

Second confession: I am an American and as such, am used to a slightly fear mongering media. Fox News, anyone? Perhaps, my second confession also explains the first. In his documentary that looks at the American healthcare system/ fiasco, Michael Moore suggests that the reason Americans are less inclined to protest or strike has to do with the fact that we have fewer social safety nets to fall back upon. If an American’s participation in public demonstration were to result in no longer having a job, that individual would suffer heavy financial consequences such as the loss of their job-sponsored healthcare. In case you Euros didn’t know, nearly half of all bankruptcies in the US are the direct or indirect result of medical costs. Compound that with the fact the average household has $12,000 of credit card debt (not mortgage or education related, just credit cards) and you can why Joe American might be stars and stripes terrified of protesting their own government, let alone capitalism.

London, 3rd April 2009. After G20 leaders agreed a mind boggling trillion dollar plan to tackle the global financial crisis, Gordon Brown declared that the London summit marked “the day the world came together to fight back against the global recession”, and the beginning of a “new world order”. President Obama heralded it as “historic" and "unprecedented”. But, how momentous was the London summit yesterday?

Fun and games at the summit family photo (Photo: Richard Lewis, Newsteam.co.uk/London Summit Flickr stream)

Today, there was much messing about in boats on the river Thames in leafy green South West London. Earlier this afternoon, rowers from Britain's historic universities, Oxford and Cambridge, slugged it out in the 155th boat race. However, there was much other activity on, and by, the river throughout the day...

Here’s something not often heard said with an English accent: the European Union should continue to pursue an autonomous security and defence capability because it is a really, really good idea. Here’s something almost never heard said with an English accent: welcome back, France – we missed you.

By Fanny Hass,
London, 18th March 2009

“We, as Europeans, are not able to do our homework. If we do not act stronger, history will beat us up!”

When Joschka Fischer, Germany’s former minister for foreign affairs, came to speak at the London School of Economics at the end of February, he did not carry too many positive words in his luggage. Instead he jolted every EU enthusiast from blurry dreams about our ‘well’ functioning institution. But rather than being a turn-off for aggrieved listeners, Fischer’s remarks gave cause to inspire and motivate one or another to get even more involved in creating a successful future for the European Union.
(Joschka Fischer, former German foreign minister and vice chancellor, 1998-2005 Photo: Fanny Haas)